Thank you to those that sent me suggestions and comments on my last post “A long trip home”.
I love being able to interact with more and more people who are reading these thoughts. That conversation, while dealing very much with the simple dynamics of a husband and wife after a business trip, has led to a lot of thinking on my part.
Why is it that I am so obsessed with “harmony”?
Why do I feel like I “see” it so clearly?
Why do I apply it so freely in so many aspects of my life, but yet seem to struggle to apply it in others?
While I have always known that a few things have “defined” me and have shaped the way that I think, today, for some reason, I reached a clearer focus.
When I did my first “big” talk on harmony, I used the analogy, that I feel like I have lived in someone else’s home my whole life… and now, I am finally home… in the concept of harmony and in each and every moment.
I realize now that as a result of both the way that I am physiologically wired and the environment that I knew at home… growing up… I was stripped of my ego, everything that I thought made me special ended up being questioned…
My upbringing, while free from obvious hardships of poverty or divorce or anything else was unusual, and in some ways uniquely challenging.
Who am I, if I am not my family?
Who am I, if I am not my country?
Who am I, if I am not my mother and father?
Who am I and where do I belong?
Growing up EVERYTHING that defined me was not only questioned but critically assessed.
I came from Peru. I loved Peru. And, then overnight, I had to leave.
I had a large, loving family. I loved my family. And, then overnight, they were gone (or I had to leave).
I knew I had aspects of my mother and father that defined me, but I was told in no uncertain terms by the opposing spouse that there were no aspects of my mother or father that were worthy or valuable.
I aspired to be like my uncles (my mother’s brothers) who were my mentors and my role models, but I was told on every possible occasion by my father of every failure and character flaw that each of them had, as well as the flaws that were basic to the entire family…
NO ASPECT that defined me was valuable or worthy…
I respected the United States. I got to a place, where I loved the United States, but that made me a traitor according to some.
I loved many of the aspects of American life, but I was told by my Peruvian family all of the reasons why the American way of life was flawed and one dimensional.
No matter what I tried to associate with, the other side deflated it, devalued it.
In college, I was so crazy close to failing out. By that point in my life, I had some great friends, but I had no anchors. I had nothing that I truly believed about myself that was worthy. I gained about 80 pounds in college. I had a horrible track record with my grades… I had started down the path of being an engineer because my uncle was an engineer… but I had truly no idea who I was.
I defined myself by my friends goals. I tried to associate with people who seemed happy and successful. I didn’t have any friends that didn’t provide me with some kind of goal that I could borrow.
I borrowed my friends, their dreams, their families... for my bright moments. WIth them, even if I didn't feel worthy, I felt happy.
I had Susy. She was with me through all of this. She was off at her school, doing wonderful as usual. And, I was hanging on for dear life. I have often said that Susy loved me way before I loved myself.
I am amazed in hindsight that I had the amazing friends that I had and have still today from those days. I am grateful that I didn’t die doing something stupid, because I did stupid on more than one occasion. I am so very grateful that I made it through.... to live this day and this moment, and to meet my boys and to breathe this air...
But, I believe I made it through with a small, small seed of an ego, an unwavering will to just keep moving in some direction and a lot of borrowed dreams.
While I don’t know that it ever looked this bad from the outside, from the inside, I was nothing… I was so lost… I was so crazy alone…
It was better though to be alone, than to be in the heart of the disharmony. I liked being alone and independent… even if I was alone as could be in my heart… at least I wasn’t in the crossfire of disharmony.
It wasn't just how my parents destroyed each other in front of me, or through me. It was also in the things they said directly to me. My father criticized EVERYTHING I ever cared about. My mother, was my rock. She was the one person in the world who knew me and whom I felt "got me and my value". And, then she stopped talking to me for months after the deaths of my sisters. She spent almost 15 years stepping in and out of hate for me... or at least what I interpreted as hate. And, her distance and her moments where she pushed me away are the ones that hurt the most.
Lastly, it was my parents approach to life. They lived scared of so many things.
Ironically and symbolically, my father would not buy us a home. He was scared. He was scared of committing to live in the USA. He was scared of who would cut the grass. He was scared of what would happen when it snowed. He was scared of so many things... and so we rented. All of my friends lived in their own homes... and we rented on a month to month basis for 15 years... I went as far as finding homes for my parents to buy. I so desperately wanted to be in our own home, in the neighborhood... I had dreams about what that could be like... and they stayed dreams until I left home.
My life is a blur in hindsight. I have so few memories of specifics from decades of my life. Compared to many of my friends, it is scary how little I remember about moments lived.
Why am I sharing this? Because this is how I came to be able to see more clearly how the world works.
I survived! I was hired by Procter and Gamble and my life started over… my parents moved back to Peru… so I started over with a small nub of an ego and a lot of borrowed dreams.
A friend at P&G told me one day, “With everything that you say and do, you either give life or you take life away.” And that was a spark… that was a seed that spoke to the little bit of ego left in me. It made so much sense… some people gave me life, others took it away. If I had anything to me… I knew that I wanted to consciously GIVE life with what I said and did. That made sense. That explained a lot… about why I had so little life left inside of me…
The night I got engaged, I called my father to tell him that I was engaged… on that call with Susy by my side, my dad went on for 15 minutes about how my mom was making his life hell, and how he was done, just done with her. I love my dad, and I know he regrets that moment, but it was par for the course. He came was my disharmony.
My father is possibly the most ironic man in my journey. Ironic because I don't know that he loves anyone in the world more than he loves me, and yet he made me feel so crazy unworthy for so much of my life. I get now, that it was so not his fault. His dad died when he was only 4 years old. If I felt alone in my life, my father probably felt alone on a whole different dimension.
The difference between my father and I is simply that I could tell the difference between harmony and disharmony before I could say the words out loud. My ego wanted to find happiness and knew it could only come from harmony. My father wanted to find happiness and he has spent his whole life chasing it with disharmony and has never been able to find it. He is not mean... he just didn't know the difference. No one ever told him. And, he never learned it on his own. My heart breaks thinking about him now. I can't imagine getting into my mid 80's and never having found it.... it was exhausting enough looking for it for 45 years...
I was chasing things… success, money, meaningful relationships, a better life… but its hard to construct things without a foundation. Can't construct from wishes or chasing things... you need to start with gratitude and then expand into the want.
When I moved to China, my boss, whom I respected significantly and was an older gentleman told me, you have “no principles”… you have nothing that you really believe in other than “getting results”. I think what he saw… he was an insightful man… was my lack of an ego, my lack of a hierarchy to my believes, my lack of a foundation. He respected me, and I respected him. He liked the value and the energy that I brought to the team. We connected and we bonded… but he knew I was missing something significant.
I left P&G chasing things. I went into dot coms and floated and drifted.
My ability to relate to people and drive things forward kept me going…
I saw dynamics in companies and in business that created similar feelings in me to those I had felt as a kid. I didn’t know exactly where they came from or why. But, I knew when they were there.
I was watching all the time… looking and observing… what worked and what didn’t… why did some companies seem successful and others not so much. I saw it in companies I belonged to. I saw it in the dot coms. I saw it so clearly in 180s. I saw it again at EMG.
It has only been in the last few years that everything that I was seeing started fitting into a single story, and ultimately into a single idea… the idea of harmony.
I don’t know if it makes sense or not, but my lack of confidence in my own foundation, my sense that I was living in “someone” else’s house for decades made me extremely sensitive to my own presence.
I was desperate to add value, but I knew I brought no value of my own, so I had to get the value from those around me, from the situation.
I had no confidence in my own value… but I found all the value was right there in front of me, in the truth.
And, for some reason, I could see it. I could see it all the time, even when so many people around me couldn’t.
They had opinions… that were often wrong.
They had egos… that were often big.
They had an inability to see other people’s opinions, because their own opinion limited their vision, or because their own opinion altered the truth.
I couldn’t put my finger on it… but the way I approached things made people trust me.
I couldn’t put my finger on it… but I could get results when others couldn’t.
I couldn’t put my finger on it… but I felt so close to some people and so far from others.
I couldn’t put my finger on it… but things were never as simple as everyone wanted to portray.
I couldn’t put my finger on it… but I felt like I could tell ahead of time what would succeed and what would not.
I knew everyone had value… I knew it of everyone, but I doubted it in me.
Now, things are different. I still try to keep my ego very much in check, but I can’t take much credit for that, because my ego was beaten out of me through a radiation treatment known as disharmony.
My ego is small… but it works, and it keeps me safe.
I don’t know if its my ego… but there is a “seed” of who I am that I have locked inside of lots of scars and a self made titanium shell… made up of my rationality. And, my rationality protects my ego with all of its might.
I show up in the world now, clear as to my value… my value is my awareness of harmony, my ability to see it, and my boundless desire to share it and spread it.
Harmony begets harmony and disharmony begets disharmony.
But, how can I possibly explain the process?
Each of our processes for finding the seeds of harmony that lead to success and happiness via our own journey.
The ONLY thing I know is that the concept of harmony, which does not belong to me, is IT.
EVERYTHING that I have ever seen, lived and read supports it and explains it. EVERYTHING!
It CANNOT be taught. I can only share my thoughts, my experiences, and allow you to take them in whatever way they make sense to you.
This is why I am certain that I can never charge money in any way for sharing the concepts of harmony… because I don’t own it, because I haven’t mastered it, because it has been a gift and a struggle.
How can you charge for something that is a gift and a blessing?
How can you charge for something you don’t own?
But, I have to be careful.
I have to be careful, because this certainty about the concept of harmony is making me bolder. I am so certain that it at times is making me impatient or intolerant to disharmony.
But, the moment I feel disharmony… I become disharmony myself and I spread that…
And, I have to be careful… because that seed of me that is kept under the scars and under the rationality still exists… and while it is the source of my energy and the source of my love, it is delicate and vulnerable in a way that is hard to describe.
This entire post seems so self serving…
But, if you are going to read my thoughts,
I owe it to you to share how they are conceived.
I owe it to you and to me, to share why they may be limited…
And, I owe it to you to share why they are so deeply held and so vastly powerful…
I don’t own them.
I aspire to them.
They are the source of my sanity…
And, understanding this additional clarity, I believe and hope, will make me wiser in helping others find harmony...
Some people say that I am crazy... some people say that I am the sanest person they know... who knows...
They allow me to live IN sanity or insanity ;-)
I love each one of you for sharing this journey with me.
We all have our story, our source of disharmony, our childhood challenges… whatever it was that made us question ourselves and our worth.
Think about your story. Work to understand your story. Understanding the size of your ego is a wonderful place to start.
Our egos have two ways to fight for survival… through fear or through love.
Understand what fuels your fear and what fuels your love… and then choose love.
My life for some reason took my ego down to a nub, but wonderfully so, it also gave me this gift of perspective. If I can keep my ego small, I can see the truth... and it is perhaps hardest with those closest to me.
Living all of your life in someone else’s home makes you a grateful and kind guest.
Living all of your life in someone else’s home makes you able to travel thoughts and cultures and opinions without a lot of baggage or liability.
Living all of my life in someone else’s home at one point was a liability a limiting factor and a source of pain, and now it’s the source of my greatest happiness.
Living all of my life in someone else’s home has allowed me to realize that my home is deeper and harder to find than most….
Ayn Rand says we all have a "sense of life" which is all of our experiences in life summed up in every moment. My "sense of life" is powerful but complicated. My sense of life is confusing. My sense of life is passionate, humble, generous, ambitious and on a very deep level insecure and protective...
It has been "a long road home"...
There are so many friends... dear, dear friends that come to mind as I think about all of this... Susy, Luis Aspillaga, Ernesto Bancalari, Phil Case, Al Stein, Dov Cohen, Jamie Moore, Alan Seidleman, Jonas Furberg, Steve Friedman, Emil George, Brian LeGette, Stephen Candelmo, Kerry Rutemiller, AJ Fechter, Chris Hutter, Diane Elgin, Ben Lamb, Ernie Moyer, Joe Francaviglia, Charlene Taylor, Dan Schmitt, Jeff Hampton, Scott Manchuso, Brent Cleveland, Ashley Jones, Christian Gras, Jordan Grable, Zach Shariff, Matt Turpin, Jodi Hume, ... Claude Limoges, Robin Cook, Lia Seminario, Bill Chaff, Jess Rogers ... and so many others... the list keeps getting longer and longer of the people who stepped in my life and shared themselves in some meaningful way...
Some of these friends came and went... but so, so many have stayed and held my hand all along the journey...
And, I am home NOW in this and every moment… and I live in harmony as well as in the pursuit of it.
Thank you for always allowing me to be a guest in your home and in your moment!
Yours in harmony,
Nestor